bakerstreet | Gothic Romance

Gothic Romance

Lightning streaks across the inky blackness. Somewhere far off in the deep woods, a single wolf howls. Go ahead, bring your meager candle close, no matter the danger that the flame presents to your luxurious satin clothing - you won't find any warmth to relieve you in this mansion built just as much of regret as it is of stone. But you have no other choice since you've been imprisoned here.

Or perhaps you're the one who's keeping a less-than-willing soul here to ease your own pain. Either way, you've found yourself the subject of an atmospheric, suspenseful gothic romance!

a type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent. in England. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the forerunner of the type, which included the works of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles R. Maturin, and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic romances. The influence of the genre can be found in some works of Coleridge, Le Fanu, Poe, and the Brontës. During the 1960s so-called Gothic novels became enormously popular in England and the United States. Seemingly modeled on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, these novels usually concern spirited young women, either governesses or new brides, who go to live in large gloomy mansions populated by peculiar servants and precocious children and presided over by darkly handsome men with mysterious pasts. Popular practitioners of this genre are Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Catherine Cookson, and Dorothy Eden.
( source )

HOW TO PLAY
1. Comment with your character, info, and preferred role/trope or even setting. Is your character a bright-eyed ingenue? A tortured soul with as many skeletons in their closet as their are rooms in the castle? Hired help who has fallen for the mansion's newest guest and wants to save them from a certain doomed fate? How about a vampire, werewolf, or ghost? The only limit is your imagination!
2. Reply to others. Hash things out or go with the flow. Just get your gothic, creepy shipping on.
3. RNG the prompts if you need to. Otherwise, have fun. Treat this as seriously or as irreverent as you'd like.

PROMPTS
( change the gender/pronouns out for appropriate ones! | source )

1. Powerful love. Heart-stirring, often sudden, emotions create a life or death commitment. Many times this love is the first the character has felt with this overwhelming power.

2. Uncertainty of reciprocation. What is the beloved thinking? Is the lover's love returned or not?

3. Unreturned love. Someone loves in vain (at least temporarily). Later, the love may be returned.

4. Tension between true love and father's control, disapproval, or choice. Most often, the father of the woman disapproves of the man she loves.

5. Lovers parted. Some obstacle arises and separates the lovers, geographically or in some other way. One of the lovers is banished, arrested, forced to flee, locked in a dungeon, or sometimes, disappears without explanation. Or, an explanation may be given (by the person opposing the lovers' being together) that later turns out to be false.

6. Illicit love or lust threatens the virtuous one. The young woman becomes a target of some evil man's desires and schemes.

7. Rival lovers or multiple suitors. One of the lovers (or even both) can have more than one person vying for affection.

8. Dark (and brooding?) At least one member of the pair has a tragic past or experiences that have left them closed off to the world.

9. Less than ideal beginnings. It's an age-old story: falling in love with the person who locked you in the dungeon. Or the attic, if they're a bit more hospitable.

10. Supernatural elements. Strange dreams about a shadowy place or a mysterious face. Blurry figures that linger just out of the line of sight. And the master of the house, always indisposed around the time of the full moon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's something oddly tender and sweet about how Dorian tells him to stay and pulls them together once more. Toby's avoided letting any amount of romance into temporary relationships to avoid the heartache he brought on himself in his early years, but this... could be something much longer lived. They don't know the limits of what Dorian can do or his lifespan, but even getting a few extra decades of time together - assuming they both want that - is more than enough to get the wheels turning in the vampire's head. There's a good chance for more here, with how this night has gone, making this first hint of romance all the more special.

Not that he has time to think on it. Good God, he's let his attention wander plenty for the night, and the young man grabbing hold of him now requires his attention. Demands it with hands on his body and lips pressed to his.

It's as perfect as Toby could ask for a moment like this to be.

Moaning softly, the vampire wraps his arms around Dorian and pulls them flush against one another as they kiss. He lets them linger here, kissing the life from each other and parting only long enough for the young man to catch his breath, for what might as well be hours. Their hands wander over one another's bodies without hesitation, and eventually Toby finds himself kissing his way down Dorian's neck again. Fuck he smells so damn good.]

What do you want from me? [he asks suddenly, still pressing kisses to warm, pale skin.] Dawn's still hours off - I'm all yours until then.

[He should be more suspicious. More afraid. There's a man here (a vampire) that came here to kill him, and now he's ending up wound thoroughly around the axle of Tobias' presence and attentions. He can hardly care about it either, which should be another sign that this is a dangerous path to tread.

Worrying about what's good for him is the very last of his concerns right now- or potentially anymore in this man's company. He grips at Tobias as they kiss, already (and easily) stiffening again thanks to his eternally-preserved youth and virility body.]

I think I've healed fully- or at least I don't feel weak anymore. [Toby probably sees where this is going.]

Can you bite me again? [Not the first human on Earth to want such a thing, but no less stupid than each and every one of them.

But that singular moment of high, what it turned being in the other man's presence into, is something that's already touched the core of his being once. He wants more.]

[It's usually the last ask of a desperate, stupid mortal who's still high and likely to die anyway after an evening in bed with him. But in Dorian's case, the vampire can tell he's ready. His heartbeat is strong, his body is hot the way it was when they first laid hands on one another - is there any real reason not to see how this goes?

(Hint, there's none.)

Grinning, Toby lays Dorian out on the bed, holding the young man down as he presses biting kisses to his neck.] Twice in one night is a rare treat for me. And for you? I'm eager to have it. [He flashes the other man a brief grin, then plunges his fangs into his neck without hesitation. This time he drinks hard and fast, drawing more deeply than he did before. Dorian's body can certainly handle it - as has been proven over the last several hours - and if a harder, longer bite means a better high for the human? Toby's all for it.

When he finally releases the younger immortal's neck from his grasp, he's panting with need. His chest heaves unnaturally with the need for breath, and he shivers as warmth ripples through him, contrasting the now cool body against his. It's intoxicating, and God does it feel good.

Unlike before, when he wanted to know everything Dorian was feeling and sensing as a result of his bite, Toby doesn't give the man space to say anything before drawing him in for messy, copper-tasting kisses. They can come back to artistic words and talking about how fucking brilliant it is to be high like this together another time, because now is the time for all the touching, kissing, and preparation needed to get them both back to sex.]

Gothic Romance

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